


Orison

by avani



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22467655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: Guinevere knows her sins.
Relationships: Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac/Arthur Pendragon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Orison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [borrowedphrases](https://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedphrases/gifts).



The priest at Amesbury preaches once again of Mother Eve’s treachery, of woman’s innate unreliability, and yet the Abbess does not raise complaint. She knows her sins, knows them as familiarly as she does the stubble on Arthur’s chin that he never could manage to trim and the broken fingernails Lancelot chewed when he believed himself unobserved. She recalls them as well as she remembers the feel of their mingled laughter against her shoulders.

(Somehow no one had ever noticed that Lancelot, on more than a few of his quests, had traveled in company of an unknown knight and veiled lady. No one had ever noticed the King and Queen swore vows of holy seclusion from the world more frequently than expected for any of their stature. Even Meleagant, when he had found bloodstains in her bed, had never guessed that not one man, but two, had crossed the Sword Bridge for love of her. 

They could not take that night, or its memories, from her—much as they tried.)

Guinevere bows her head and mouths her prayers once again.

*

She had tired, eventually, of deception. Neither Arthur nor Lancelot had realized (or, if they had, had not wanted to admit it) how their love smothered in secrecy, with nothing more than Gawain’s sympathetic looks to nourish it. She had acted, then, as a Queen must. She had left enough hidden hints that Mordred, always so clever, might find his way to the truth; she had looked Arthur in the eye and told him she did not fear the flames.

And still she had miscalculated.

She had trusted that Lancelot would know Arthur, and her, well enough to expect that her pyre should only be haphazardly guarded, an easy escape that asked no slaughter. She had believed that Arthur would see the flight to Joyous Gard as an invitation for him to join them, as soon as he could pass his throne to his trueborn son. She had kept faith in them both.

She had been wrong to do it.

The priest nods in satisfaction to see her contemplating her mistakes, and Guinevere makes no complaint.

And yet—

A breeze blows through the open chapel window, bringing with it the ink and smoke of the nearby monastery and, more faintly, a whisper from Avalon. Her loves had saved her from the Summer Country, from the Tangled Wood, from her sister’s wrath, it reminds her. What is one rescue more to that? 

A foolish thought, perhaps, but always Guinevere’s greatest vice and virtue has been her fidelity. It is that which has sustained her through years of waiting, enduring, hoping that they might all three abide together. It is that for which she most wishes to be remembered.

She raises the rosary to her lips and begins to pray.

**Author's Note:**

> Amesbury is borrowed from Tennyson as the convent Guinevere eventually joins. The Summer Country and the Tangled Wood are both different homelands of Guinevere’s abductor in versions of that myth—I prefer to see it here as one of many adventures these three shared together!


End file.
